


Halves

by spills



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: CF Route, For all the years passed by, Implied Character Death, M/M, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21756373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spills/pseuds/spills
Summary: You can't follow a man that doesn't want to be followed.You can't find a man that doesn't want to be found.Tragic, you can't be someone else's first choice, and all you're contending with is guilt that refuses to be washed away.
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Halves

“A moment please.” 

The door clicks shut, and Sylvain finds his knees giving out underneath him, the weight of the sword in his hands heavy. 

He hasn’t worn his armour in years, and the Lance of Ruin stashed where the light doesn't reach. There are tears stinging at the edge of his eyes and he clutches the sword close to his chest, where his heart beats loud in his ears. 

Dropped on his doorstep, without any signature or indication of who it would belong to. 

It’s evening, and the dying sunlight shines into his study like an embrace. An orange glow, the same light that turned amber eyes a flaming gold when Sylvain had tucked midnight blue hair behind his hair. Leaned in close for a kiss hesitantly met before the two of them left their homeland. Sylvain knows he should have expected the other man to left once the war was over – when His Highness was executed by the Emperor. 

Sylvain wishes he knew the right words to have made him stay in their youth, instead of letting Felix slip from his fingers that night. Guilt was something love couldn’t wash away, and loyalty was something that forced one to either stay or leave. Felix’s loyalty, at the very end, was still for Dimitri. Sylvain’s was to his duty as Margrave, even after his father had been deposed of. 

It’s something the Gautier heir should have seen coming, after all, Felix was meant for their young prince at the time. 

He called their prince a beast and boar, joined the Empire to put an end to him, whatever darkness he had seen during the rebellion. The night the war ended, Felix was shaking, fingers trembling as held onto Sylvain tight. 

Held him close as if he would disappear. Two days later, Fraldarius the younger had disappeared before the crack of dawn. Sylvain remembers the moment Felix had woken up. He had cradled his face, laced his fingers with Sylvain’s and kissed the back of his fingers. At the time, Sylvain was giddy – pretending to be asleep just to savour the moment. He was tired at the time, and wanted any moment of peace he could get, even if their classmates haunted him in his sleep.

(His battle with Ingrid was always the worst to relive in his dreams. In their little quartet, he was the oldest, remembering how they would follow behind him – playing at being knights with him and Glenn. Sweet, young Ingrid, who was as courageous as she was beautiful. Her eyes twinkling whenever Glenn would compliment her stance or simply wave to her from the training grounds. Her cheeks would become a rosy pink, and all Sylvain could fondly think of how adorable puppy love was. 

Then with her fiancé dead, she was just as obsessed with honour in death, paving her own path towards where Glenn was. 

Sylvain hopes that in her final moments, she thought that she had a good death, died for her king, and what she believed for till the very bitter end. Green ribbons still made him think of blonde and green eyes that blinked away angry tears before her final dive at him.)

In his later years, Sylvain didn’t have much to remember Felix by. When he left that night, he took his coat and his sword with him. He ended up leaving behind a ring, the only personal item left behind. Till now, Sylvain doesn’t know if it was a mistake, and it hangs around his neck on a silver chain, like a noose. A shudder up his spine, and a quiet sob that leaves his throat gracelessly before becoming a mirthless laugh. 

“Fuck, Fe,” he whispers for the ghosts inhabiting his home to here, “It’s just like you, to leave without a sound. But be selfish enough to still want me to have a piece of you.” The sword in his palms is undoubtedly Felix’s. 

After the night he left, Sylvain searched the village for him, the outskirts, but it was too late. And without a trace or sound, he was gone. 

That was the second time Sylvain had lost Felix, if he had to think about it carefully. 

Once upon a time in their childhood, Sylvain would say that he almost had Felix all to himself, if it weren’t for Dimitri and Glenn, and whatever duties the two of them were supposed to serve. Sylvain being the heir of House Gautier, had his future planned neatly ahead of him, his father allowing small detours to happen, if only to leave Sylvain more complacent for the role. Felix didn’t need to worry about that, wasn’t supposed to have carried such heavy burdens when Glenn was there. 

When Felix was 4 and Sylvain was 7, all he could think about was about how small the other boy was, and how easily he could be moved to tears. The cats he would feed outside the kitchen, how he would hit Sylvain with tears in his eyes whenever he noticed the bruises Sylvain had brought with him upon arriving Fraldarius’ doorstep. 

Felix always had trouble deciding if Dimitri or Sylvain was his favourite playmate as a child. Sylvain didn’t mind back then, because he always knew Felix would come running to him first if he faced an issue, got into a fight, bawl his eyes out in his arms. Maybe it because somewhere in Felix’s mind he knew that he would always be Sylvain’s first choice, even if Sylvain wouldn’t always be his own first. 

It’s stupid really, because even at the academy, during the war, Sylvain had a habit of fighting recklessly. Charging the frontline, even if it was calculated risk, it was still done out of a lack of concern of his own life. Each time, it was only Felix fighting by his side that would drag him back to the battle, guard his back a little more carefully. Felix spitting and cursing at him, dragging him back from the dead, just because he could, just because Sylvain would follow him to Hell and back. 

If that was what Felix wanted. 

You can’t follow a man that doesn’t want to be followed. You can’t find a man that doesn’t want to be found. 

And by the time a man is 25, having fought a lifetime of war, Sylvain is tired enough to retreat back into the Gautier chill without much of a fight. Order is needed in Faerghus, and the point of a government was to facilitate as such. After sacrificing so much, Sylvain knows that the debt he owes ran deeper than personal connections. What was owed to the people and land still had to be paid. 

Aside from that, there was Sreng, which his ancestors had been fighting against for centuries. With the rise of a unified Empire, Sylvain figures that there is no better time to attempt peace negotiations once again, hoping that the newer generation there is as tired as he is. 

Decades later was when Sylvain finally had gathered enough courage to look for Felix’s trail – which surprisingly wasn’t hard to find. A hired sword and as Sylvain wrote a letter to the Mercenary Guild to request Felix’s service, he wonders if he crossed Felix’s mind over the years, the way Felix has crossed his.   
He wonders if Felix had ever resented him for not looking for him sooner. 

All the years that have passed by and Sylvain ended up losing Felix a third time, unable to learn from his mistakes. Skirting over topics of the past, treating the other man a little too gentle, as if he was fragile – to be protected. Protection something he didn’t need after Glenn’s death.

It was a simple job, to serve as a bodyguard for the finalization of the Gautier-Sreng Border Treaty. A long month spent together, and for all the chances he had to ask Felix to stay, Sylvain could never find the right words to say. 

And once again, out of his grasp, only to return in the form of a left behind sword. 

Margrave Gautier had lived a life much longer than he would have preferred, or intended.

A childish promise, and one Sylvain had clung onto, through the days he had to sludge to, caught in between weeks and years that blurred between his eyes. For all the promises between them, he would have never thought Felix would be the one to break it, trying to pick himself up from the ground. 

Dying together was of course a luxury. Something fairy tale-esque, and in his older years, Sylvain wouldn’t consider himself a prince or a hero in a story, but he had hoped that he and his most dearly beloved would have met their end together, no matter how bittersweet.


End file.
